Day-Dayenu
I’m not Jewish, but I play one on holidays.
I am a godless heathen, but my wife and her family are Jews, which exposes me to a lot of yiddish words and Jewish traditions. One of those is the Passover Seder, which I had to skip this year to go to NY ComicCon, (Sorry, God!), where the Jewish people give thanks to God for bringing them out of bondage in the land of Egypt and leading them to Israel, the promised land.
One of the Seder traditions is singing the song Dayenu, which translates roughly to “It would have been enough” or “It would have been sufficient”. The song lists the things God did for the Jewish people: freeing them from slavery, punishing their captors, parting the red sea to aid their escape, feeding them in the desert, bringing them to the promised land, etc., and repeats “dayenu” after each one, saying that “if we had only been given this, it would have been sufficient”, but the song goes on for 15 stanzas.
I think that’s a nice tradition, even if some of the stuff God did in those stories was… harsh. It’s important to be thankful for the wonderful things in your life, and to remember to stop and appreciate them, and so I wrote my own version about the last year of my life.
Had I written a book I was proud of, but not gotten an agent,
Dayenu.
Had I gotten an agent, but not sold that book,
Dayenu.
Had I only sold one book, but not three,
Dayenu.
Had I sold three books, but not to a major US publisher,
Dayenu.
Had I only sold to a US publisher, but not in the UK,
Dayenu.
Had I sold in the UK, but not in Germany,
Dayenu.
Had I sold in Germany, but not France,
Dayenu.
Had I sold in France, but not Japan, Greece, or Russia,
Dayenu.
Had I sold in Japan, Greece, and Russia, but not been able to write full time,
Dayenu.
Had I been able to write full time, but not had Terry Boooks read my work,
Dayenu.
Had Terry Brooks read my work, but not called it brilliant,
Dayenu.
Had Terry Brooks called my work brilliant, but my sister not gotten engaged,
Dayenu.
Had my sister gotten engaged, but my two sisters-in-law not become pregnant,
Dayenu.
Had my sisters-in-law become pregnant, but not some of my best friends,
Dayenu,
Had some of my best friends become pregnant, but not my wife,
Dayenu.
But all that did happen.
Day-Dayenu.
The best part? You *deserve* it.
There are a lot of lucky/talented bastards running around out there.
It’s nice to finally see a lucky/talented mensch.